12 Week Plan Live Event Talk 1: Nobody Wants To Work Anymore- 3 Keys To Build Meaning In Your Work

Sitting in a room listening to a variety of presentations, most of them non-engaging with slides that looked like this.  HUH? Then a physician stands up and begins to relay a series of statistics accompanied by stories. The suicide attempts among college girls have increased from 1% to 2%...a 100% increase in a 2-year span.  Nearly 1 in 3 girls have contemplated suicide.  We have a college-aged daughter and two college-aged sons…this woke me up.  After the presentation, I waited until the presenter was finished shaking hands and walked over into a quiet corner where he was refreshing coffee and asked, “What happened?” His response, in paraphrase…” it is well documented that there is a two-year reversal in behavior among HS and college students in general…so instead of an 18-year-old dealing with 18-year-old things, you have an 18-year-old who is developmentally 16, trying to deal with 28-year-old things because of the unfiltered availability of information.” Thirty years ago, a small subsection of people in the lowcountry of South Carolina would have known of the intimate details of the Alex Murdaugh trial… now there are people in New York, California, and Indonesia whose lives have been impacted by a very very local story.   That is 28-year-old Grown Adult information, being straight-veined into 16-year-old minds in New York City while also trying to deal with acne, prom dates, and asking, “Should I download Snapchat OR TikTok OR  Tinder OR all three?”   There is a narrative that we have heard around the country as we have spoken to groups in Tampa, CLT, ATL, Houston, Dallas, LA, and Vegas…. “Nobody wants to work anymore.” The business owners are looking at the labor pool, and looking at the modern “flexible work environment” and concluding… “Nobody wants to work anymore.” The key leaders are looking at the teams they are leading, and/or the people they are trying to hire and train and conclude… “Nobody wants to work anymore.” But let us reason together for a moment.   Really ask, do people REALLY not want to work?  REALLY? Do people REALLY want to wake up in a fog, sit around on the couch, indulge in meaningless things all day, eat dinner, watch Maury Povich and Dr. Phil, go to sleep, and do it all over again day after day after day? No. You know what people want?  What YOU want?” MEANING You want to be-the-better you know you have the capacity to be! You want what you do to matter! You want what you do to move the needle! You don’t want to stand around the cubicle wasteland and drone on and on about the TPS report.  To do meaningful things, things that matter, there are 3 things that I want to reiterate, remind, and regurgitate… First, you need hard coachING and you need TO coach hard A reshaping is needed (chucks pottery example sermon 2/26) It offers mobility, portability… And yet, periodically needs to be reshaped and reformed. Pottery shifted an entire economic culture  Allowed for portable societies The beauty of the pottery metaphor is that… Solid, hard coaching re-forms, both as you receive and give thoughtful coaching  The alternative of this is to ignore coaching, the sound of which just sounds idiotic. Kyrie Irving/Kevin Durant (audio)  Nothing good will be done that is done outside of wisdom and accountability  Tech will change, languages will change, empires will come and go Wisdom and accountability have and will always be Instead of seeking principle wisdom, We PURSUE THE BEST books, conferences, podcasts, and new strategies to find non-caloric solutions that will run themselves so we don’t have to work.  THEY WILL NOT… We keep trying to buy the BEST project management software, CRM, billing system… The BEST software is the software that you will actually use!...it requires action The BEST town is the town you will actually live life in…it requires action The BEST car is the one you will actually drive…it requires action The BEST spouse is the one you will actually enjoy spending time with…it requires action ALL of these require YOUR choice, and YOUR action WHY did we see a regress of maturity and cognitive capability among a younger generation?   Not realizing that solving problems IS THE JOB ROLE Because outside forces stepped in (including us in this room) and did not allow them to work the muscle of their own independence! What we touted as flexibility became inactivity and apathy…just waiting.  We’ve done much the same in our business trying to remove people from the challenge of solving problems… We have a tool called the Ideal Weekly Schedule…it is among the SIMPLEST tools a BOP coach brings in their toolbelt. You want the adherence level of an Ideal Weekly Schedule is?  30 minutes of pre-work 2 minutes of review daily UNLIMITED discipline and implementation Parkinson’s Law tells us that “work expands to the time allotted” Was challenged to do a duel The night before the duel, he wrote letters to friends… Then wrote his “Mathematical Testament” that changed the entire landscape of modern math…IN ONE NIGHT Annie Dillard - a weekly schedule is “willed, faked and so brought into being” Give yourself a week and you’ll take a week…give yourself an hour and you’ll take an hour EVARISTE GALOISE A POLITICAL ACTIVIST AND MATHEMATICIAN…and a man of turmoil Less than 20% if we’re being very generous You know what an Ideal Weekly Schedule requires?   A manufactured stricture of our time creates urgency Instead of the weekly schedule, we look at the sub-contractor, the vendor, the customer, our own team and point our finger at them blaming our haphazard week on outside forces. We assume all MEANINGFUL time means personal time Assuming you believe in creation, one of the very first things we as humans were created to do was to WORK There is MEANING IN WORK. THAT IS FULL TIME -> BEST EFFORT YOU OWN YOUR TIME, and YOU WANT THAT TIME TO BE MEANINGFUL within the helpful expectations your business has helped set for you Not to work ALWAYS Not to work SOMETIMES We were designed to work, and rest, and work, and rest…a rhythm When we surround ourselves with the accountability of coaching (internally and externally), we are pushed to work and rest When we lead a person who needs to BE coached, we surround them with the accountability to work and rest, work and rest REALITY: We are trying to rest, pass it off as work and excuse it as “flexibility” Our current narrative: “I need flexibility to interrupt the drudgery of work to take care of life” Let’s reframe the narrative:  “Technology has provided the flexibility to check in on life while I’m doing meaningful work, and to be fully present in life while I am resting from work” Coaching will hold you accountable so you can find meaning in both.  By which YOU can now coach others to do the same. The Second reminder of meaningful work: happiness is elusive, joy is manufactured Full confession - I’m teaching this as a student…not the expert Hedonic treadmill:  “these conveniences by becoming habitual had almost entirely ceased to be enjoyable, and at the same time degenerated into true needs, it became much more cruel to be deprived of them than to possess them was sweet, and men were unhappy to lose them without being happy to possess them.” - Jean-Jacques Rousseau TRUE STORY: We’ve achieved a lot of chaos-busting tools and coaching, and yet a failure that we have had at BOP since we started in 2015 is building an incentive compensation structure and coaching module that works for everyone A constantly rising tide that could go up…or down leaving the business in a tough spot if it doled out its reserves.   We have never seen more than 10-15% of employees offer a sincere and non-expectant thank you for additional compensation received (bonuses, etc.) Why? The joy of possessing them was immediately rooted out by the numbness of expecting them Why have we pushed so hard against year-end, random bonuses?  B/c the human psyche can’t help but see it as a recurring expectation…joy is lost b/c the convenience was never found… FLIP THE NARRATIVE IN YOUR HEAD: “All joy…make it your in-front-of thought” James 1:2 - James was the son of an Israeli Construction worker who lived in a village town between Haifa on the Mediterranean and the modern Sea of Galilee When they were older, his brother was falsely accused of a crime, and murdered in public James was beheaded because of his teaching and his body buried in Spain  What was the message he taught?  “All joy…make it your in-front-of (first before any) thought” What is joy - a willful acceptance that a situation has brought you favor Testing leads to endurance Endurance leads to growth Growth leads to fullness Fullness is the opposite of emptiness which is what many of us feel now.   Choosing Joy in hard things = Satisfaction and not emptiness WHY JOY? ACTION:  A NEW QUESTION TO ADD FOR CHECK IN: “what hard thing happened this week that you can find joy in?” Third, your job is to swim in a pool of problems and solve them This was the wisdom of the great Vanilla Ice - “If you’ve got a problem, yo, I’ll solve it…”  Without a PROBLEM, there is no need for a solution, therefore no need for job roles…no need for services and products.   Artif. Intel. can now perform both repetitive and non-repetitive tasks But they cannot solve problems with a human touch  Your role exists b/c of PROBLEMS, so it is unreasonable for any of us to be convinced that your role will be without continuous challenge Fortitude: courage in pain and adversity…courage when problems persist A new training course at USC: How to Fail: A Resilience Building Workshop Universities across the country are seeing the need for proactive training in the area of  a) identifying problems,  b) learn from problems  c) solve problems,  d) endure thru problems We are in a space and time where we need to embrace the power both of the problem, and finding joy in solving the problem Billing glitch…opportunity for gratitude that you get to solve it Sub-contractor no show…opportunity for gratitude that you get to solve it Client won’t follow through…opportunity for gratitude that you get to solve it Marketing machine is not delivering leads…opportunity for gratitude that you get to solve it Sales conversions hit or miss…opportunity for gratitude that you get to solve it It is time to boundary ourselves and get BACK to the work of solving problems where we can use Technology to allow for the flexibility to check in on life while I’m doing meaningful work, and to be fully present in life while I am resting from work Over the next two hours we have set the table for you to either wallow in a large, easy pool of pity…or to put your cape on, take a deep breath, and go to work to solve important problems that will change your life…and in turn, you will change my life. One of our 5 core values is WRITE IT DOWN…what is the ONE thing that jumps out at you, you want to work on?